Great Regulars: De Chirico Paints Ariadne on Naxos

By Carol Rumens

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: The Saturday poem: De Chirico Paints Ariadne on Naxos

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"You look like the Wreck of the Hesperus," my mother used to exclaim irritably, when I came in from play looking particularly dishevelled. No, she wasn't a literary lady: she enjoyed "the flicks" rather more than books, and preferred knitting patterns to poetry. But, like anyone else who had gone to school in the first quarter of the 20th century, she'd been introduced to verse by the venerable Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82). As for me, I loved the swashbuckling sound of "Wreck of the Hesperus", but years passed before I met the poem.

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: From Longfellow's translation of the Divine Comedy

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